The Lucky Blacksmith
Decembrist Revolt, St Petersburg, 1825
My mother was keen on music, literature and needlework, but she had an ambiguous relationship with history, especially as it related to her family. After all, she was the victim of one of the biggest historical upheavals of the early 20th Century, the Russian Revolution, with all its brutality and tragedy. She purposely turned her back on the past and I don’t think she knew very much about her ancestors.
It was my amateur historian father who took far more interest in knowing about her antecedents. Somehow, he had winkled out of her that somewhere in the past there was a link to The Decembrists, or Dekabriski, which he considered something of which her family ought to have been very proud.
Not to get confused with an indie pop group, this refers to a group of dissidents who initiated what is sometimes considered to be the ‘first’ Russian Revolution in December, 1825. A group of army officers hoping for political and democratic social reforms to bring Russia in line with those they had witnessed in Western Europe and America attempted a coup after the death of the progressive Tsar Alexander I. Unfortunately, the next Tsar Nicholas I was repressive. The revolt failed and some paid the price with death while many others were exiled for life to Siberia.
As Russia was firmly locked behind the Iron Curtain for most of the 20th Century and not knowing the language, it was impossible for my father to find out anything. Only now with the wonders of the Internet - and which includes a lot of patient negotiating via Google Translate - it is possible to track back and to see that my family’s link to the Dekabriski lies with my second great-grandfather with the impressive name of Athanasios (Afanasi) Petrovich Pershin.
Born in the year of the revolt, 1825, he lived until 1904, and became a successful merchant in Siberia. His daughter Alexandra would marry another prominent merchant, Ivan Alexandrovich Oparin, and their son Peter was my grandfather.
Afanasi’s history is remarkable. Working as a humble Chita blacksmith like his father before him, somehow he came to the notice of Ivan Ivanovich Gorbachevsky, one of the exiled Decembrist officers, who took a special interest in the young man, educated him and helped him learn how to read and write.
Gorbachevsky must have also helped him into starting business enterprises that would eventually see the Pershins become one of the major merchant families of Siberia. Afanasi would also go on to establish banks, stores and be involved in the first ever Co-operative Society in Russia, as well as build schools and other community enterprises.
Considering Afanasi could not read or write until he was twenty-four, what is equally remarkable is my recent discovery that he wrote his personal memoirs of the Decembrists and extracts from these are available to read online. If you know Russian, you will be at an advantage as the Google Translate versions are clumsy, but one can get the gist with patience. It is not always a particularly flattering expose of the Decembrists and Afanasi does not hide the seedy side, drunkenness, avarice and violence that accompanied their existence in exile.
What extraordinary serendipity that this serf, a simple blacksmith, encountered an educated and enlightened man when he did. It changed his life beyond comprehension although ultimately the wealth and privilege that Afanasi bequeathed to his descendants would prove their undoing by the time of the next major Russian Revolution in 1917. All that was built up would be lost. It was a true case of rags to riches to rags.
When members of my mother’s family were stateless and adrift after yet another turn of history and revolution, this time in China in 1949, it would be a Pershin descendant who had escaped and was working as a lowly janitor in San Francisco who signed my grandmother’s papers as a guarantor to help her enter the United States.
I do not have any photos of Afanasi, although given that he lived to 1904, there could be some to be found with careful research, but below is a photo (c. 1901) of his daughter, Alexandra and her husband, Ivan Alexandrovich Oparin, my great-grandparents.
Apparently Gorbachevsky remained in exile in the Chita region until he died in 1869 and his grave at Petrovsk still can be visited today.
Also, there have been a couple of movies. One made in 1975 is available in full online, with subtitles.
And here is a trailer for a new movie out called "The Decembrists", see Youtube.
A bit difficult to follow, but here are the links to my ancestor’s memoirs of the Decembrists.
Part I
Part II
Also some other facts are included here, including some amusing comments by another of his granddaughters on Afanasi's marriage which are rather baffling in English. There is also this statement:- “Throughout his life, [my] grandfather carried respect for the Decembrists and taught his children this."
Gorbachevksy's memoirs here (Link only to the record, nothing in English available)
Bronze. Russian Blacksmith by Kossowski.
Houses of the exiles in Chita
I.I. Gorbachevsky
My great-grandparents, Ivan and Alexandra (nee Pershin) Oparin
Statue to the first Russian revolutionaries, the Decembrists, at Kamianka, Ukraine.
Style and elegance, a memory of a Hollywood star
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It’s long gone now; the Three Monkeys Inn at Marondera, Zimbabwe (formerly Marandellas, Rhodesia)
Photos of the actual Inn itself don’t seem to exist on Google, although they must be lurking out there, still pristine between tissue leaves of old-style leather-bound family albums or glued down, faded and suffocated in later plastic ones. Perhaps they just lie loose in boxes of dead grandparents’ stuff that no-one knows quite what to do with - we all have them, those photos ... place unknown ... names unknown. Some party or other gathering of colonial Africa types taken in the 1950s - white people sitting around while a black waiter in his starched white tunic and red fez stands by with a tray.
When my parents and I visited my god-parents, Lena and Albert Golledge (my substitute grandparents) in the 1950s, we often went out to the Three Monkeys Inn for a roast Sunday lunch, or afternoon tea and scones, or just sundowners in the garden - Castle Beer for Uncle Albert, a Cape brandy and dry for my Dad, Gordon’s Gin and tonic for Mum and Aunt Lena. There was no prohibition on a child having a shandy in those days and I’d sit there with my own glass, probably heavier on the lemonade than beer though.
There wasn’t a swimming pool in the very early days at the Three Monkeys, but there was a tennis court. Aunt Lena told me that she had once watched Dana Wynter play tennis there when she was home on holidays from studying to be a doctor at Rhodes University in South Africa. “Such a graceful and elegant girl,” Lena remembered. “No wonder she’s in the pictures now.”
Dana (formerly Dagmar) had not become a doctor but an actress instead and she was quite a celebrity with a movie called “The View from Pompey’s Head” that was the talk of the village of Marandellas - in fact the country as a whole.
Mrs Winter (Dana had poshed up her surname with the “y”) was so proud of her step-daughter’s fame that she put up a giant photograph of her in her front lounge and then made sure the curtains were always open so you could see it every time you went down their street. Dana’s father was a local doctor, and he and his wife regularly attended the little thatched roof Church of England where I remember going to a few Christmas or Easter services.
My Aunt Lena was originally from Georgia (country, not state) and would have had things in common with Mrs Winter, who also had Slavic origins in Hungary and both of them would have identified with the turmoils they had escaped from at the time of World War II in Eastern Europe.
As a teenager, I was thoroughly in awe of Dana’s beauty and grace on the screen and I asked Aunt Lena if there was any chance she could ask Mrs Winter to get me her daughter’s autograph or a signed photo? Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled when Dana personally wrote to my Aunt letting her know that a signed photo was on its way to me. That photo had pride of place on my bedroom wall for years.
It’s a pity that Dana’s career seemed to have fallen away to occasional appearances in B-grade television shows or movies, but she is probably best remembered for some iconic war movies of the late 1950s, including “D-Day, the Sixth of June”, “Fraulein” and “Sink the Bismarck” as well as the sci-fi movie "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
I was interested to learn that she spent much of her time in a house at Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains near Dublin. Having recently visited Glendalough myself, I can fully understand its attraction to someone who was perhaps never quite comfortable with the role of movie star and needed to escape the pressures of Hollywood. Perhaps, as they did for me, the Wicklow Mountains also reminded Dana a little of the beautiful mountains of Eastern Highlands of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
Troutbeck, Inyanga, Southern Rhodesia, c. 1961 (Copyright Veteran Rhodie, Flickr)
Glendalough, Wicklow Mountains, Ireland (Copyright All Around Ireland)
The Legend of Ben Hall
Poster by Ross Morgan
Being a pathetic hist-picker [or history-picker, my variation on nit-picker] I often have difficulty in enjoying historical movies or TV series as just too many of them ignore facts and mess with the truth, or have plot holes big enough to sink the Titanic. As of writing, there is a storm of protest doing the rounds on flaws in a series about the last Russian Tsars. I’m not an academic or expert on the Romanovs by any means, but know enough to detect not just false beards but glaring errors in facts, so I can’t bring myself to watch it as I know I’d end up chucking cushions about and terrifying the cat.
But then a rare experience comes out of the blue and it restores your faith that some filmmakers do their best to get it right. When I borrowed this DVD from my local library, I cynically wondered if I was in for yet another miss as in previous efforts in the bushranger genre - thinking in particular of the string of unsatisfactory efforts at recreating the story of Ned Kelly. I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged that a group of filmmakers took a real story and didn’t try to doctor it to make it quirky, artsy, or into some kind of apologetic or modern politically-correct statement which has been the case with so many recent historical movies.
The Legend of Ben Hall covers the latter part of the bushranger’s life, the last desperate days of him and his gang that deservedly had everything coming to them for all the fear and terror they had unleashed on the countryside. Ben Hall was just a criminal even if he did have some positive qualities - he is reputed to have never actually killed anyone in spite of being handy with his arsenal of pistols and rifles and engaged in many encounters with the authorities.
The film has authenticity stamped all over it and manages to use the language and terminology of the day without making it unintelligible to modern audiences. There is fine camera work and scenery and interiors are accurate, the women reflect their plainness, their drudgery and despair - all the reality of the time. With largely unknown actors in the main roles, there are no celebrity faces or egos distracting from the characters, and each plays their part with genuine feeling. This is an excellent and rewarding reflection on a turbulent era in Australia’s history and, although some critics have been unkind, its honesty makes this film a keeper. My only quibble is that it does not go deep enough into the original reasons Ben Hall took the path he did, a bit more background on his early association with Frank Gardiner could have helped to flesh out his character even more.
For those interested in Australia’s colonial or bushranger history or who are already familiar with the country around Canberra, the Southern Tablelands and the Central West of New South Wales, there are still many traces of Ben Hall and his gang members John Dunn and John Gilbert.
The grave of John Gilbert can be visited on the road near Binalong. John Dunn shot a policeman at the pub at Collector. Individuals with ancestral roots in the area all have tales to tell. As he was considered to be more of a gentleman than his associates, Ben Hall still cuts a romantic figure of sorts. I once met a woman who proudly told me that her grandmother had waltzed with Ben Hall at Araluen. Another good friend of mine when I lived in Canberra told me that it was on her family’s property at Forbes where the law finally caught up with Ben and she often rode to the exact spot where he died.
A Tale of Two Ties
In 1970 when I was living in London, the Rhodesian situation continued to be a thorn-in-the-side for the British Government. Ian Smith’s “illegal” regime had been inflicted with all manner of international sanctions, yet the country managed to survive, even thrive, helped in no small part by the South Africans.
I can’t remember precisely where or when I read an article about Ian Smith and the-then South African Prime Minister, John Vorster, having a meeting after which they were presented by someone with ties that had been made to order by the Royal Appointment Tailors, Gieves of Savile Row. The article carried a photo of the two famous politicians wearing the ties.
The ties looked like your usual public school tie, narrow, blue with green and gold stripes, and they had the letters COBC printed on them which the article said stood for “Commonwealth Old Boys Club” - Smith and Vorster certainly being Old Boys of that institution!
I thought these were an absolute hoot and so I telephoned Gieves and asked how I could order a couple of COBC ties. After a bit of hesitation on the part of the first salesman, he said he would put me through to someone who might be able to help. I had visions of a little man holed up in a secret back room of Gieves where he continued to tailor sanctions-busting suits and other accoutrements for the outcast Rhodesians and South Africans. It probably wasn’t far from the truth. The conversation went something like this:
Me: ‘Good morning. I am interested in purchasing two of the COBC ties as made for Mr Ian Smith and Mr John Vorster.’
Back room person (BRP): ‘Yes, madam. We may have some in stock. May I enquire as to your interest in this particular attire?’
Me, in poshest voice possible: ‘My father used to be in government in the former Northern Rhodesia and he knows Mr. Smith and therefore qualifies as an old boy of the Commonwealth.
BRP: ‘Ah. Admirable. Indeed.’
We then discussed price which I cannot for the life of me remember exactly, but I think was surprisingly reasonable given it was a Gieves one-off original - probably around ten pounds.
Me: ‘I’ll take two.’ (One intended for my father, Bill, the other for my then boyfriend and future husband, Peter, who would probably enjoy the irony.) Shall I call into your shop and collect them?’
BRP: ‘Oh, no madam, they will be sent on approval. May I have your address?’
Me: ’19 Hyde Park Gate, SW7’. (This was exactly the right address to be giving when ordering anything from a place like Gieves. I could almost hear BRP heave a sigh of relief.)
A day later a London cab arrived with a man with wearing a top hat and carrying a plain and unmarked box in which the ties were carefully wrapped in tissue paper for my “approval”. I paid for them by cheque.
My husband Peter wore the tie occasionally and delighted in telling people the story behind it, until it became too politically incorrect to do so. My father Bill last wore his COBC tie when he met Ian Smith on a private visit to Canberra in the 1980s. Smith recognised it of course and Dad was able to tell him the story of how he came to have one himself.
The tie shows it was made for Benson Investments of Cape Town. If anyone reading this knows more about these ties or owns one, or knows of others who do, I’d be delighted to hear from them.
(Scroll down to read an earlier post about living at Hyde Park Gate.)
Not quite up to GPS, a bit of family lore
In 1924, my Dad was just 19 years old (he didn’t turn 20 until November) and made his first adventurous trip on his own, travelling all the way from his home in South Shields on Tyneside to London so that he could attend the 1924 British Empire Exhibition held at Wembley between April and October.
Obviously excited at this prospect, he would have told various family members about his plans and one of his aunts, Bella, who lived in rural Northumberland, told him he would need a map in order to get around London and so she gave him hers.
She also wrote on the back of it in pencil, showing time and date instructions and telephone number of the relative or friend Dad was to stay with in London. This was a Mr Allen of the "Rusticana" Cycle Works in Chiswick (the address and CHISwick 1191 number matches with various 1920s street directories for London to be found online.) Being very particular to make sure her young nephew didn't get lost, Aunt Bella even went so far as to mark where he would have to go in Chiswick and Wembley with little dots (as will be seen below.)
When my Dad arrived in London, he was somewhat dismayed to find that Aunt Bella’s map was “a bit out of date” and not much use so he had to get a new one in order to find his way to Chiswick and Wembley. I’m not sure if he told her when he got home, but the experience has gone down in family lore ever since and on a visit to England a few years ago, I was delighted to find this “out of date” map still in existence, saved together with a copy of Dad’s guide to the Exhibition.
It is interesting to think that in just a few more years the map will be another 100 years out of date and even more useless than it was in 1924!
Obviously excited at this prospect, he would have told various family members about his plans and one of his aunts, Bella, who lived in rural Northumberland, told him he would need a map in order to get around London and so she gave him hers.
She also wrote on the back of it in pencil, showing time and date instructions and telephone number of the relative or friend Dad was to stay with in London. This was a Mr Allen of the "Rusticana" Cycle Works in Chiswick (the address and CHISwick 1191 number matches with various 1920s street directories for London to be found online.) Being very particular to make sure her young nephew didn't get lost, Aunt Bella even went so far as to mark where he would have to go in Chiswick and Wembley with little dots (as will be seen below.)
When my Dad arrived in London, he was somewhat dismayed to find that Aunt Bella’s map was “a bit out of date” and not much use so he had to get a new one in order to find his way to Chiswick and Wembley. I’m not sure if he told her when he got home, but the experience has gone down in family lore ever since and on a visit to England a few years ago, I was delighted to find this “out of date” map still in existence, saved together with a copy of Dad’s guide to the Exhibition.
It is interesting to think that in just a few more years the map will be another 100 years out of date and even more useless than it was in 1924!
It's all in the address
English Heritage
The blue plaque wasn’t yet in position when I used to look out at No. 28 Hyde Park Gate every day from where I lived across at No. 19.
Occasionally you would see the odd person or small group milling about in the road and taking photographs as it was where Sir Winston Churchill had died a few years earlier.
There were quite a number of people living close by that might attract the odd paparazzo as well. Some residents that I recall included an actor who became more famous as the “Schweppes man” than anything else he did owing to his TV commercials (see below). There was also Princess Lee Radziwill (sister of Jacquie Kennedy) and actor Christopher Plummer and no doubt others of whom I was unaware.
Hyde Park Gate is a strange street. It is in two parts leading off Kensington Road, one road is straight and the other ends in a circle. They are unconnected although have the same name. The Australian High Commissioner lives in the round bit, at No. 45, also known as Stoke Lodge.
No. 19 was owned by an Indian gentleman whose name I've forgotten. He lived downstairs and had subdivided the upper floors into flats that he leased to groups of young women. I shared with three others and my bedroom looked out over the small enclosed back garden that was not accessible to us and which backed onto the mews of Queen’s Gate.
The landlord was a pernickety character rather too interested in what his tenants were up to and he liked to see who came and went. He did not approve of male visitors in general, and was outraged if he suspected any of them might have dared to stay in the flats overnight. He was quite likely to bail you up in the main hall and demand to know if you had had a man on the premises overnight and why you should be allowed to continue to sully his domain with immoral doings. Nobody ever told him the truth of course and I don't know that he ever acted on his suspicions by kicking any girl out, but his attitude created much amusement for us and our respective boyfriends, who found various ways of dodging in and out unseen. Many male visitors were there in the innocent capacity as family members or casual friends looking for a convenient London sofa to kip on overnight but our old-fashioned landlord didn’t appreciate it was the dawn of the 1970s and things had changed!
My tiny bedroom must have been a valet's room or gentlemen's robe at some stage as one wall had many drawers still labelled for gloves, handkerchiefs, neckties, etc. * The building generally was pretty shabby and run-down, but it was a great address to give if one wanted to open a bank account, cash a cheque or purchase something over the phone or by mail order. I once ordered a couple of unique custom-made ties from Gieves gentlemen's outfitters (an interesting yarn for another MMMusing at some stage) and was astonished when my “on approval” immaculate package of ties arrived in a taxi and was carried to the door by a bloke wearing a top hat!
A couple of years ago I stayed in another building with links to Churchill - the Londonderry Arms at Carnlough in Northern Ireland.
With its quirky weathered charm, I don’t think some of it has had a serious refurbishment since Winston Churchill owned it and slept there on occasion, but it has some items of Churchilian memorabilia and a nice friendly bar where I guess you can still get good old Schweppes Tonic Water ....
* A weird bit of serendipity when researching a completely different topic I came across a newspaper article that reveals that 19 Hyde Park Gate was once the home of Sir Arthur Temple Felix Clay, a Baronet who was pretty handy with a paintbrush. Some of them can be seen here.
Domestic Science - a tribute
On International Women’s Day it is interesting to look back at how things have changed in the education of girls and women - definitely so much for the better.
Among my recipes collection is an old exercise book dating back to 1959 when was I was in high school in Africa. It is from my “Domestic Science” class and leafing through brings back a lot of memories which, thankfully, I can now laugh at although at the time it was a deadly serious and important subject and you needed to pass it to graduate.
In those days, this was a girls-only subject and the corresponding boys’ class was “Woodwork”. (Heaven forbid there was a boy interested in cooking or a girl wanting to learn how to use a lathe, but if you had such desires they would have to remain your secret.)
Some of the most hellish women were Domestic Science teachers and I loathed the subject with a vengeance. Sewing was my biggest bugbear. If anyone has ever experienced the torture of sewing a “French seam” by hand at the age of 9 or 10, then they might know what I mean. Even doing one with a sewing machine can be a challenge with slippery fabrics, so imagine trying to do this by hand with a teacher looming over you, shouting at you if your stitches were too big or crooked or your seams wonky. If you were shaking so much you pricked your finger, drew blood and marked the fabric, then you were up for a big fail that could include detention.
I was once put into detention at the tender age of 7 because I had just started at a new primary school and didn’t know how to knit whereas every other girl in the class already knew at least how to cast and on and off and do a few rows of purl and plain. I didn’t even know what those phrases meant. My mother did embroidery but not knitting. Conversation went something like this (true story!):
Mrs V. “What do you mean, you can’t knit?”
Me. “My mother doesn’t knit.”
Mrs V. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t believe you. Every girl learns how to knit from her mother.”
(In desperation, I tried a health and safety approach.)
Me. “My mother doesn’t let me knit.”
Mrs V. “What? Why not?”
Me. “Coz I might poke my eyes out with those things.”
Mrs V. “Rubbish. You are a nasty little liar. Detention after school.”
In high school we had Miss C. for Sewing and graduated to modern technology (sewing machine). Here things were a little different for me personally, as cronyism was on my side. Miss C. also served on the local town council and my father was the mayor, so bawling me out might not be so good for her political ambitions. Therefore, she tended to turn a blind eye to my grubby marks and my tendency to snap sewing machine needles. Don’t ask me how, I just seemed to have to look at the things and they flew off in all directions. Miss C. was also the teacher who kept a close watch on your appearance. Long hair always in a ponytail, skirt below the knees, polished shoes, no jewellery at all, no make-up, clean fingernails, etc. (Looking at scruffy high school girls today with their full make-up, piercings, dyed hair, tight skirts, etc. I can’t help agreeing that Miss C. might have had a point.)
But the teacher we had for Cooking truly had the ability to haunt my dreams. Miss P. had long hair braided over her head like those German female concentration camp guards with an expression to match. Her mark on my life is in that recipe book where I see she docked marks for spelling mistakes. She gave me only 5 1/2 out of 10 for my writing up of a Queen Pudding recipe because my handwriting wasn’t neat enough; obviously your writing being more important than your cooking capability.
I also lost marks for not separating eggs properly and getting a bit of yolk in the white. You were also forced to scrub floors and wooden tables clean after every session, another area where there was the potential to lose marks. The fact that most of us girls would have had African servants who did the scrubbing is a major irony in the context of this subject that was not lost on us. Frankly, I preferred the scrubbing to the writing up of recipes - I could use it to expunge my loathing of Miss P.
It took me a many years to recover from Domestic Science. And only after forced rehab - I made myself learn to sew a little, to knit and to cook without worrying about how to spell “meringue” - and while never a genius in any of these areas, I finally came to enjoy some aspects of DS. Scrubbing floors and tables is another matter (thank goodness for modern surfaces).
But part of me remains rather rebellious about subservience to the domestic arts and one of my favourite quotes is this one from Joan Rivers:
“I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again.”
The damning trail in your passport
The evidence that damned me
While discussion of present-day politics is always best left alone, the outrages from the new American administration are making even the most reluctant individuals like me get very hot under the collar and vocal.
Take this, for example, from The Independent. Assuming it isn’t “fake news” - and that’s another worrying problem - this holder of Britain’s highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross, which he won fighting with the British Army in Iraq, has run foul of the new American regime. Maybe if he had a white skin he would have been OK, but the blatant racism also involved is abhorrent.
If you are a frequent traveller you may have to be careful of what’s stamped in your passport. If you’ve been to Iraq - or any other place that Mr Trump arbitrarily decides is dangerous to Americans (Australia, watch out!) - I recommend you get rid of the thing by means that do not appear deliberate - perhaps the dog can chew it up - and apply for a new one.
I should have done this back in 1969 before my own humiliating experience on entering Britain after an ocean voyage from Canada. The officious customs and immigration people at Southampton held me back until every single passenger had left the ship and I was forced to sit and wait until they decided to interrogate me, as an “undesirable”. Never mind that I had a valid British passport but because it had originally been issued in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, it stamped me with the mark of Cain. The passport was issued in December 1961 when Southern Rhodesia was still a self-governing Crown colony and fully part of the British Empire and Commonwealth and thus a perfectly valid place to obtain a British passport. But come 1965, that colony had decided to go its own way and declared independence from Britain (UDI), calling itself just Rhodesia.
In the early 1960s, I had lived in England and gone to college there and where I had my first job. Then, together with my parents, the same passport was used when we immigrated to Canada, in 1964. In 1967, two years after Rhodesia declared UDI, I returned to the UK on a working holiday and had no problem coming and going between Canada, the UK, and various countries in Europe.
Thinking it might be an interesting career path, and showing how naïve I was, I even applied for a civil service job at the Foreign Office, only to be told that due to my unfortunate background - a Russian mother, Rhodesian-issue passport - I was unworthy of entering the halls of British officialdom and shown the door pronto. I was actually quite chuffed to get knocked back on the assumption that I had all the makings of a spy!
But Britain increasingly toughened its attitude and sanctions against Rhodesia and had become particularly vicious towards anyone who had Rhodesian links - ironically this could apply to anyone; blacks, Indians, as well as whites. British assets belonging to Rhodesian residents were frozen (another experience that impacted my family and wasn’t resolved until as recently as 2014), mail from that country was surcharged or just not delivered in the UK, travel discouraged, long distance phone calls were almost impossible. Abuse from socialists or left-wingers was another hurdle I had to face even though I personally had nothing to do with UDI as I’d been born in Zambia, the now independent African country to the north of Rhodesia, but had applied for a passport when Salisbury just happened to be the nearest geographical place to get one.
But back to that day in 1969 on board the ship. I was actually rather frightened with my shipboard friends all gone ashore leaving me sitting there alone. Would the shipping company be forced to carry me back to Canada? What if Canada didn’t want me any more either? Would I be sent to Rhodesia? At least I had an uncle there who would take me in. These thoughts whirled around my head. Finally, a plainclothes man sat down with me, a more sympathetic individual than the others, and said that I would be allowed in on the strict proviso that I immediately apply for a new passport showing my residence as England, even if technically it was Canada, because then I shouldn't have any trouble anywhere.
I was never so relieved in all my life, and I did exactly as he said. A couple of years later, I had more dramas trying to travel back to Rhodesia from Australia, but that’s a tale for another time,
Meanwhile, with the way our world is moving towards more intolerance, misinformation, suspicion and aggression, I’d just encourage anyone who intends travelling to America to carefully consider the trail that might be in your passport.
Take this, for example, from The Independent. Assuming it isn’t “fake news” - and that’s another worrying problem - this holder of Britain’s highest award for valour, the Victoria Cross, which he won fighting with the British Army in Iraq, has run foul of the new American regime. Maybe if he had a white skin he would have been OK, but the blatant racism also involved is abhorrent.
If you are a frequent traveller you may have to be careful of what’s stamped in your passport. If you’ve been to Iraq - or any other place that Mr Trump arbitrarily decides is dangerous to Americans (Australia, watch out!) - I recommend you get rid of the thing by means that do not appear deliberate - perhaps the dog can chew it up - and apply for a new one.
I should have done this back in 1969 before my own humiliating experience on entering Britain after an ocean voyage from Canada. The officious customs and immigration people at Southampton held me back until every single passenger had left the ship and I was forced to sit and wait until they decided to interrogate me, as an “undesirable”. Never mind that I had a valid British passport but because it had originally been issued in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, it stamped me with the mark of Cain. The passport was issued in December 1961 when Southern Rhodesia was still a self-governing Crown colony and fully part of the British Empire and Commonwealth and thus a perfectly valid place to obtain a British passport. But come 1965, that colony had decided to go its own way and declared independence from Britain (UDI), calling itself just Rhodesia.
In the early 1960s, I had lived in England and gone to college there and where I had my first job. Then, together with my parents, the same passport was used when we immigrated to Canada, in 1964. In 1967, two years after Rhodesia declared UDI, I returned to the UK on a working holiday and had no problem coming and going between Canada, the UK, and various countries in Europe.
Thinking it might be an interesting career path, and showing how naïve I was, I even applied for a civil service job at the Foreign Office, only to be told that due to my unfortunate background - a Russian mother, Rhodesian-issue passport - I was unworthy of entering the halls of British officialdom and shown the door pronto. I was actually quite chuffed to get knocked back on the assumption that I had all the makings of a spy!
But Britain increasingly toughened its attitude and sanctions against Rhodesia and had become particularly vicious towards anyone who had Rhodesian links - ironically this could apply to anyone; blacks, Indians, as well as whites. British assets belonging to Rhodesian residents were frozen (another experience that impacted my family and wasn’t resolved until as recently as 2014), mail from that country was surcharged or just not delivered in the UK, travel discouraged, long distance phone calls were almost impossible. Abuse from socialists or left-wingers was another hurdle I had to face even though I personally had nothing to do with UDI as I’d been born in Zambia, the now independent African country to the north of Rhodesia, but had applied for a passport when Salisbury just happened to be the nearest geographical place to get one.
But back to that day in 1969 on board the ship. I was actually rather frightened with my shipboard friends all gone ashore leaving me sitting there alone. Would the shipping company be forced to carry me back to Canada? What if Canada didn’t want me any more either? Would I be sent to Rhodesia? At least I had an uncle there who would take me in. These thoughts whirled around my head. Finally, a plainclothes man sat down with me, a more sympathetic individual than the others, and said that I would be allowed in on the strict proviso that I immediately apply for a new passport showing my residence as England, even if technically it was Canada, because then I shouldn't have any trouble anywhere.
I was never so relieved in all my life, and I did exactly as he said. A couple of years later, I had more dramas trying to travel back to Rhodesia from Australia, but that’s a tale for another time,
Meanwhile, with the way our world is moving towards more intolerance, misinformation, suspicion and aggression, I’d just encourage anyone who intends travelling to America to carefully consider the trail that might be in your passport.
Haven from the Holocaust
There’s this small book in my library collection on African history that is probably only known to a few people. Written by Frank Shapiro, an Israeli historian, it is entitled “Haven in Africa”. This is from the opening Note to the Reader -
"Thousands of Jews fleeing Hitler could have found a safe haven in central Africa, had they but been aware of it. Sadly, efforts on their behalf by well-meaning outsiders were thwarted and did not bring results. The reader can judge the extent of this historical failure and decide for himself whether a conspiracy was involved."
At the time I was born just after World War 2, a polio epidemic was raging through our community and people tried to avoid places where they might have contact with sufferers, and that included unnecessary visits to the local hospital. This meant that my mother, recovering from a near-death experience during an emergency cesarean, had few visitors apart from my father. But one woman did come to see her regularly, unafraid of infection or contamination. She was Jewish, the wife of a prominent local businessman for whom my father managed a department store. Despite their religious differences (my mother was Orthodox Christian) they had the Russian language in common and this woman would have understood how difficult it was to have been, firstly, a refugee from your own country and, secondly, a foreigner in an environment that was not always welcoming, not to mention having no-one from your own family around you to help with your new baby.
Among my childhood mementos is a white felt rabbit that was her gift to me as a new-born. Whether she made it herself, I don’t know, but I still treasure it today. Its significance for me has grown over the years as I have come to appreciate how much my mother must have valued this woman’s friendship at a time when she would have been at her most vulnerable. Through the wonders of the Internet, I have been able to find out a little about the woman who gave me the rabbit. She was Reeve Gersh and below is an image of her gravestone in Massachusetts where she and her husband lived out their later years.
And this link will tell more about the Gersh family of Kitwe. After working for Maurice and Harry for some years, my father later set up his own accountancy practice and many of his clients were Jewish friends and associates of the Gersh family. Through their connections to other prominent Jews throughout Southern Africa, including the future Prime Minister of Rhodesia & Nyasaland, Sir Roy Welensky, they were instrumental in helping my father when he decided to go into politics.
Our world is again embroiled in refugee turmoil and the turning away of desperate people. For anyone baffled at how so many countries turned their backs in the 1930s on the Jews destined to suffer under Hitler, it is worth reading Frank Shapiro’s revealing but also sad and frustrating tale of missed opportunity and failure. Northern Rhodesia was the one country to which countless European Jews could have escaped had they only known about it and had there not been deliberate suppression of that knowledge in the wider community.
Another book that has chapters on the Gersh family is this one about their uncles, the famous Susman Brothers (also connected to Marks & Spencer).
There’s this small book in my library collection on African history that is probably only known to a few people. Written by Frank Shapiro, an Israeli historian, it is entitled “Haven in Africa”. This is from the opening Note to the Reader -
"Thousands of Jews fleeing Hitler could have found a safe haven in central Africa, had they but been aware of it. Sadly, efforts on their behalf by well-meaning outsiders were thwarted and did not bring results. The reader can judge the extent of this historical failure and decide for himself whether a conspiracy was involved."
At the time I was born just after World War 2, a polio epidemic was raging through our community and people tried to avoid places where they might have contact with sufferers, and that included unnecessary visits to the local hospital. This meant that my mother, recovering from a near-death experience during an emergency cesarean, had few visitors apart from my father. But one woman did come to see her regularly, unafraid of infection or contamination. She was Jewish, the wife of a prominent local businessman for whom my father managed a department store. Despite their religious differences (my mother was Orthodox Christian) they had the Russian language in common and this woman would have understood how difficult it was to have been, firstly, a refugee from your own country and, secondly, a foreigner in an environment that was not always welcoming, not to mention having no-one from your own family around you to help with your new baby.
Among my childhood mementos is a white felt rabbit that was her gift to me as a new-born. Whether she made it herself, I don’t know, but I still treasure it today. Its significance for me has grown over the years as I have come to appreciate how much my mother must have valued this woman’s friendship at a time when she would have been at her most vulnerable. Through the wonders of the Internet, I have been able to find out a little about the woman who gave me the rabbit. She was Reeve Gersh and below is an image of her gravestone in Massachusetts where she and her husband lived out their later years.
And this link will tell more about the Gersh family of Kitwe. After working for Maurice and Harry for some years, my father later set up his own accountancy practice and many of his clients were Jewish friends and associates of the Gersh family. Through their connections to other prominent Jews throughout Southern Africa, including the future Prime Minister of Rhodesia & Nyasaland, Sir Roy Welensky, they were instrumental in helping my father when he decided to go into politics.
Our world is again embroiled in refugee turmoil and the turning away of desperate people. For anyone baffled at how so many countries turned their backs in the 1930s on the Jews destined to suffer under Hitler, it is worth reading Frank Shapiro’s revealing but also sad and frustrating tale of missed opportunity and failure. Northern Rhodesia was the one country to which countless European Jews could have escaped had they only known about it and had there not been deliberate suppression of that knowledge in the wider community.
Another book that has chapters on the Gersh family is this one about their uncles, the famous Susman Brothers (also connected to Marks & Spencer).
From Find-a-Grave
Touching History
Superintendent of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Henry Larsen
A weathered stone wall; a battered antique teapot; a well-thumbed Bible. Such simple things often set me wondering about their history. Who built the wall, when, or why? Was the pot a special gift, and who first drank its tea? Whose life was helped, or perhaps hindered, by their faith?
Some psychics say material objects can carry traces of their past and while I wouldn’t go as far as believing this applies to everything that’s old, a deeply-sensed connection to an object can be the inspiration for creativity in many ways and is a route especially cherished by writers and novelists. Unless we are lucky to already know something of the item's background, mostly we can only speculate and use our imagination to fill in the gaps.
Early in my working life, I received training in a Vancouver legal firm in probate and administration of wills and estates. While most cases were routine, there were some that created havoc and resulted in years of litigation. A couple of the more memorable included the estate of a woman who had made a huge fortune in the lumber trade but who placed the onerous demand on her husband that he must never marry again otherwise he would lose his trust inheritance; another individual had sidelined his entire legitimate Canadian family in favour of a previously unknown illegitimate one across the border in Washington State.
And then there was the file that landed on my desk that brought with it a definite chill. But this was not the chill of fear, I hasten to add, but one with palpable echoes of Canada’s far North, of life-and-death adventures in frozen wastes. It carried the chill of the Arctic.
These were the effects of a man who had lived his latter years in modest circumstances and left an equally modest and non-controversial estate. Along with his Will, there were a number of personal items: letters, notebooks, part of a manuscript. As I handled and itemized the objects, I began to understand their huge significance and goose-bumps raced down my spine. Although I knew scarcely anything about him at that stage, I sensed I had been given the immense privilege of touching real history.
Now that the North West Passage is largely free from ice and a valid international transportation route, perhaps the achievements of Norwegian-Canadian Henry Larsen are not as appreciated as they should be, even in Canada. We may be living in a post-heroic age but his is still a story of courage and personal determination that deserves attention: how the small but sturdy RCMP vessel St Roch, commanded by Larsen, made the first ever West to East crossing of the Passage from Vancouver to Halifax in the 1940s; how it struggled to "survive the ravages of the grumbling, shrieking, crashing sea ice" and was stuck fast like a nut "in the icy vise ... battered from floe to floe through sucking whirlpools and finally flung out into calmer waters at the eastern end of Bellot Strait." [Canadian Encyclopaedia]
This recent article in the Vancouver Sun explains why we should forget all the fuss about [John] Franklin and why Henry Larsen is Canada’s true Arctic hero.
Below is a YouTube video featuring the daughter of Henry Larsen who tells his life story in detail and with comparisons between him and his hero, Roald Amundsen.
Amunden's vessel Maud has recently been raised from the Canadian Arctic seabed and will be the subject of a new museum in Norway, while Larsen's St Roch is a permanent exhibit of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. But her future is always uncertain and, like so many other historic vessels elsewhere, she is ever at risk of decay and at the mercy of bureaucratic squabbling, lack of funding and, not least, the lack of curiosity in newer generations who have been raised without wonderment or understanding what it really means to be able to touch history.
Screeching Jungle Haunts
It was sometime in 1953 and my Dad had an important business meeting scheduled in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia [now Harare, Zimbabwe], and decided to fly to save the long road trip down from the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt, but when he arrived at Ndola airport he was promptly “bumped off” his flight because a woman far more important than him had demanded a seat.
Naturally having been taught from an early age that a gentleman always gives up his seat to a lady, Dad grudgingly complied but without being able to get on another flight for days, he ended up having to drive all the way to Salisbury and back anyway - a total journey of over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) - much of it on rough and corrugated dirt roads.
This episode rankled Dad for years and whenever a movie starring Gene Tierney was on at the local bioscope (our name for the cinema), he refused to go as a matter of principle. Even many years later when many of the movies she had been in were relegated to TV, as soon as he saw her name in the credits he'd still go off at a tangent about the time he had to drive 1,000 miles because of this Hollywood movie star throwing her weight around.
Except there was a one major problem with this. Mum and I kept telling him he had it all wrong. Gene Tierney wasn’t the culprit, it was JEANNE CRAIN, but for as long as he lived Dad refused to admit the mistake and kept using poor Gene Tierney’s name in vain.
Jeanne Crain had been in Northern Rhodesia filming scenes for an adventure film called Duel in the Jungle, one of those unbelievably bad movies from the 1950s about Africa that featured equally bad American actors such as Dana Andrews playing the good guy while some lesser-known but marginally better British actor (David Farrar) was of course the bad guy [this hasn't changed]. Here is the nonsensical promo from one of the movie posters ...
“Through screeching jungle haunts, across the veldt of violence, past lion fang and boa coil …
they shadowed the ‘dead man of the Transvaal’ they had to bring back alive”.
Dodging the odd lion fang may have been a possibility but considering boas only coil in South America, this was a big joke to those of us born or raised in that “screeching jungle haunt” and some of the biggest screeching that went on is when these films would be shown at the Saturday afternoon matinee at the bio when us kids saw film versions of our continent which always resulted in a lot of laughter, cat-calling, whistling, booing and general mayhem. Africans were stereotyped, shots of animals on the rampage were always speeded up to very loud music and the actresses still managed to keep their bras pointy and their hair salon-fresh as they swooned into the leading man's arms.
This was his kind of manhunt - all danger - and his kind of woman - somebody else's!
This review from the New York Times pretty well sums it up as a "harmless piece of junk". I rather like the suggestion that "Miss Crain appeared spellbound by a bongo-bongo campfire that sounded like 'Deep in the Heart of Texas'.".
Every colorful scene masks treachery and cunning!
Every stolen kiss invites Death!
Savage Thrills! Furious Excitement!
But on a more sober note, there was also a tragedy associated with this movie. Anthony (Tony) Kelly, the assistant director and a former RAF squadron leader, was drowned at the Victoria Falls while scouting locations in a canoe. His body was never found. (As an aside, Kelly's wife was the daughter of the film composer Mischa Spoliansky and an actress better known later as Spoli Mills, who apparently had close friendships with diverse celebrities such as Marlene Dietrich, Ava Gardner and Dame Edna Everage.)
